Dragon Day is a cherished tradition at Cornell University that students say fosters a sense of creativity, camaraderie and community. Every year on the day before spring break, first-year architecture students parade a dragon they built across campus, which battles a phoenix built by students in the College of Engineering.
The creation of Dragon Day is credited to Willard Dickerman Straight ’01, namesake of the Willard Straight Hall Student Union. Although the year of the first Dragon Day’s celebration is unknown, there is evidence that it started as early as 1902. As an architecture student, Straight wanted to create an event where architecture students could come together and enjoy building something amid their challenging course load.
“Straight was a senior architecture student at the time and was involved in various student leadership roles, and the story is that he just wanted to organize a celebration to bring together architecture students,” wrote Prof. Corey Earle ’07, American studies, in an email to The Sun.
Earle explained that initially, the day wasn’t wasn’t known as “Dragon Day.”
“The architects were calling their creation a dragon at least by the 1920s, but the name ‘Dragon Day’ doesn’t seem to become common usage until the 1980s,” Earle wrote. “That said, many aspects of the tradition [were] pretty solidified by the 1960s.”
Straight originally began Dragon Day as a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, with the event coinciding with the holiday.
“Details are a little murky on the origin, but the generally accepted story is that Willard Straight, Class of 1901, organized a St. Patrick’s Day-themed event for architecture students, which included a large snake to commemorate St. Patrick’s driving the snakes out of Ireland,” Earle wrote. “There’s evidence as early as 1905 of architects and engineers decorating campus with orange and green in honor of [St. Patrick’s day].”
In 2013, after spring break was moved later into the semester, the date for Dragon Day was moved to the day before the start of break. Earle explained that this change separated the festival from St. Patrick’s Day.
Since its inception, Dragon Day has been characterized by ruckus, chaos and disorderly conduct, Earle explained.
“The event has been somewhat chaotic since the start, with some early iterations devolving into fierce snowball fights between architects and engineers,” Earle wrote. “The sense of chaos was embraced by organizers by the 1970s and 1980s, [when] a tradition of pranks and vandalism became somewhat more common, with green paint decorating campus landmarks.”
In response to this chaos, the University at one point decided to cancel the event altogether.
“In 1990, the Department of Architecture officially canceled the event due to ‘danger and cost,’ but it returned as a somewhat more organized and regulated holiday,” wrote Earle.
Despite its disorganized past, Dragon Day has always been a day when students come together to celebrate in a creative way.
A Sun article published in a Freshman Issue from 1985 detailing Dragon Day describes the collective spirit of the architecture students in preparation of Dragon Day, a time when students came together to share their creativity and camaraderie.
“Running on adrenaline and coffee, the human powered, freshman architect class’s dragon lurched forward on the Friday after St. Patrick’s Day — Dragon Day. The structure’s debut was the climax of a week of intense preparation and notorious all-nighters at Rand Hall,” the article states. “As soon as the green light for dragon construction was given, the class abandoned their current studio projects to plunge into the College of Architecture, Art and Planning’s traditional dragon-making.”
Current students in the College of Architecture continue to echo similar sentiments shared by students over 100 years ago.
Victoria Zhao ’28, a first year architecture student, explained that the collaborative spirit that Straight hoped to foster during Dragon Day is still present.
“[Dragon Day] encourages a lot of collaboration through architects. In architecture classes we mostly do architecture stuff. It’s really fun to venture into something different,” Zhao said. “You get to make this cool dragon with your peers. It’s really interesting to collaborate on a design with your peers.”
Jason Hwang ’28, another first year architecture student, explained that Dragon Day has given his classmates and him a chance to have fun and escape their tedious studies.
“I’m really having fun — making posters, advertising it, designing the dragon,” Hwang said. “Architecture has a really rigorous schedule — there is a lot to do and not a lot of time. [Dragon Day] really takes you out of the studio culture.”
Correction, March 28, 2:43 a.m.: A previous version of this article referred to a different past Sun article which described not Dragon Day but Spring Day, a different Cornell tradition now known as Slope Day. The Sun regrets this error, and the article has been corrected.